


Getting Whole and Healed

by lone_lilly



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-21
Updated: 2008-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lone_lilly/pseuds/lone_lilly





	Getting Whole and Healed

  
  
  
  
  


**Entry tags:**

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[ga: derek/meredith](http://la-scapigliata.dreamwidth.org/tag/ga:+derek/meredith), [grey's anatomy](http://la-scapigliata.dreamwidth.org/tag/grey%27s+anatomy)  
  
  
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Getting Whole and Healed

  
Title: Getting Whole and Healed  
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy  
Characters: Meredith/Derek  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: Through the end of 4x17-- "Freedom".

The talking thing is a slow process.

"Tell me something I don't know," he dares her once they've relocated to his tiny bed in his tiny trailer and do more than kiss her has become can't do anymore for a while _but_ kiss her.

It's a challenge but she still sees the way he holds his breath, afraid she won't answer.

"I... like to ski," she tells him after some thought and she knows it's not enough. Not what he wants to hear. But he nods and she knows, too, that _he_ knows she's trying.

It helps.

She clarifies, "Like, on the snow."

"Really?" he hums and tries to picture her participating in any sort of sport besides the one they've just engaged in for hours.

"Bunny or Black Diamond?"

"Black Diamond," she says with a look on her face like, 'duh, what's the point?' and he smiles. He can see it then. Her. On the slopes. Of course she'd like the speed.

"My mother owns a cabin in Aspen. I went once a year before med school."

It's an innocuous statement but he knows enough to put together the pieces. Before med school means before my mother told me about her Alzheimer's. Before her life changed and kept right on changing.

"I haven't gotten to go since."

She makes another face as she realizes it's something she misses. She hasn't had time to think about things like skiing in a very long time.

"What about you?" she asks and she can tell his answer by his smirk.

"I'd crush you on the Black Diamond."

"In your dreams," she laughs, snuggling closer to him and he wonders if she knows this is all he really ever wanted from her. This. This moment. He wants a lifetime of these moments.

"No, really," he insists smugly but she only keeps laughing and he shakes his head with a sigh.

"I guess I'll just have to prove it to you."

Her laughter peters out and they both know they are thinking the same thing. This is new territory for them. Tonight they've broached the subject of their dream house, of children and implied marriage, on equal footing. But now they are planning distant vacations together and it feels more real to both of them than a blueprint of luminaries ever could.

"Okay," she says softly and he drops a kiss on her forehead.

Maybe this talking thing isn't such a bad thing after all, she thinks.

\----

It becomes like a game between them. Like Truth or Dare, except all the dares _are_ truths and she finds it's maybe not as hard as she thought. Weirdly enough, she actually spends her days thinking of things she can tell him. Little things, but they seem to satisfy him.

It's kind of... nice. To be enough, for a change.

"My middle name is Karen," she tells him at dinner one night, her nose crinkling because she does not like her middle name.

They are on a date, like a real date, because he takes her places now, and they are talking so it's not as awkward as she once thought it might be. There's suspiciously less alcohol these days too but that's something she finds she doesn't miss.

"Mm," he hums, nodding as he smirks at her over a bite of steak.

"I was wondering how long it was going to take you to tell me."

"You knew?" she shrieks and he laughs smugly.

"I looked it up in your file the day after we met."

"You. Are. Such. A stalker," she glares but they both know there's no true vitriol behind it.

Besides, it's not like he had been looking up her middle name specifically that day. He went through all of the intern files. Just because he remembered every word of hers didn't make him a stalker.

"It's a nice name," he tells her placatingly but off her look he can't help but laugh again.

"Okay, okay," he says cutting her off a piece of his porterhouse and offering it to her. "My middle name is--"

She finishes his sentence with him. "Christopher."

It's her turn to look smug and he nods again, impressed.

"How do you know that?"

"I just know."

"Stalker," he accuses and she grins coyly as she reaches for her wine, taking a sip.

They may be talking now, but he doesn't have to know all of her secrets. Especially any involving his ex-wife threatening to kick her ass for losing him. She'll keep those to herself, thanks very much.

\----

Talking evolves.

He tells her about being a band geek and she laughs until she can't breathe. She shows him pictures of her hot pink hair to make up for it but he only studies them like they are CT films and then puts one in his wallet without asking for permission.

She sends him a text message in the middle of work one day that says only "Red Sox" and he responds with an, "I'm dying inside," that confirms her suspicions: he's a Yankees' fan.

They talk about family and college, therapy, and things like growing up with Mark. She asks if he's forgiven him and he tells her he hasn't. When she asks how they can still be friends, he tells her about the day she drowned and how Mark sat with him for hours.

"He was there when I wasn't," she nods and he smiles sadly at her until she cups his face in her hands and kisses him. She doesn't ask for her own forgiveness and he doesn't offer it, but they both know that, deep down, it's okay.

They have an understanding now.

\----

It gets harder, the talking. But easier too.

"I hated seeing you with her," she says, out of the blue, on a night when they are both tired and random trivia seems more of a chore than a game. She doesn't specify which her she is talking about because it's both of them. All of them. Sydney even.

It's an awkward subject to bring up and she knows it, but she's been feeling it bubbling up inside her lately and what's the whole point of talking anyway if she never tells him this?

"Like when I was with Finn," she continues when he doesn't say something and she thinks wryly to herself this is why she didn't talk before. Because she's likely not to stop once she gets going.

"You said it made you sick to your stomach. But. That's not... it wasn't... it was like--"

"Drowning," he finishes for her, turning on his side to look at her.

"Yes," she agrees quietly, deciding that's exactly what it was like.

"It was like drowning."

Only worse, maybe. Because he never came to save her. She had to do it herself.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, actually saying the words and she can tell that he means them.

She didn't think they would really make a difference if he ever said them, but they do. Maybe, she wonders, it's never truly possible to forgive someone if they never let you know they want it?

"Me too," she whispers, hoping he knows she means it too.

He kisses her this time, pulling her closer to him. If she had asked him, he would have told her he forgave her the night she built him a house out of candlelight, but just in case she doesn't know?

He shows her as well.

\----

"My dad died when I was eleven," he tells her after she's curled against him on the couch.

She's been expecting this conversation for awhile but talking has rules and she's refused to ask him until he was ready to tell her.

"My mother and sisters were at the mall looking for a dress for Kathleen. Mark and I were painting our tree house my father had built us in our back yard."

She thinks she knows where this is going and she reaches for his hand, threading her fingers with his.

"It was red," he says and she knows that's important even though it's not.

"Mark wanted red. I wanted gray and navy."

"For the Yankees?" she asks and he exhales a small laugh, surprised that she makes the connection.

"Yes," he nods, stroking her wrist with his thumb. It makes gooseflesh appear on her arm but he doesn't notice and she doesn't ask him to stop.

"But my dad let Mark choose the paint because his dad just split town for the dozenth time since we'd known each other and he said we had to look out for him."

"Were you mad?"

"No," he shakes his head, smiling fondly.

"No, I wasn't mad. Disappointed, maybe. But I knew my dad was right and I was proud, you know? That he was my dad instead of someone like Mark's."

_Or mine_, she thinks and he squeezes her hand, thinking the same.

"What happened?" she asks.

"Nothing," he replies and when she pulls back just enough to look at him he shrugs.

"I went in to get a glass of water and found him on the floor. He wasn't breathing. Hadn't been that long, I don't think. He was still... he was still kind of warm."

She nods silently and tucks her head against his shoulder. They are older and these demons are long behind them but she knows what this part feels like.

"I don't know how long I sat there with him," he confesses in a mere whisper and she knows what that feels like too. The waiting.

"Mark is the one who called for the ambulance so I guess it might have been awhile. I was supposed to bring him some water too but..." he pauses, clears his throat.

"It was an aneurysm. It happened quick. There's probably nothing we could have done."

"But you became a neurosurgeon anyway."

He's always loved her uncanny way of stating the obvious when most people would leave it unsaid and he smiles in spite of the water stinging the backs of his eyes.

"But I became a neurosurgeon anyway," he agrees.

They lapse into silence which doesn't surprise him. There isn't really much to say.

Except, maybe there is. Because she pulls away again, still not out of his reach but no longer snuggling up against him, and she chews on her lip as she studies him.

She waits so long to speak he starts feeling self-conscious, wondering if he should tell her that talking doesn't always require conversation; that it's okay if she doesn't know what to say.

"When I was five my mother tried to kill herself," she says finally, the words rushing out of her so fast it takes him a moment to realize what she's just said.

"Except not really but I didn't know that when I was five. She made me sit there with her until she passed out and then I was allowed to call for help."

"Jesus," he mutters and he wants to look away from her but he can't because this is her story, the one every thing else has been building up to and he can't make any wrong move.

She tells him about watching Ellis make the incisions on her wrists; careful, steady lines that turned red instantly and how her mother's blood puddled around them on the floor. How she wanted to get out of the way when the blood seeped its way toward the dress she was wearing. Her favorite dress, she tells him, just like he'd made sure she'd known the color of the tree house. It was part of the story.

"I don't know how long it took," she tells him. He lifts his hand to her face, brushing away a tear with his thumb, and takes it as a good sign that she leans into it.

"Before I could call. It seemed so long. I couldn't... I was only _five_."

"You were only five," he repeats, letting her off the hook even though he knows it won't matter.

And it doesn't. At all. She has told this story to three people now and he reacts in exactly the way she wishes he wouldn't. She can't explain this one for him, she needs him to get it himself. Because he's right, this is it. This is the secret, what all of the talking boils down to and if he doesn't get it...

"I still should have been able to help her," she says angrily, swiping his fingers away from her face.

He doesn't let her go easily; his hand catches hers, holds it. She does look away then.

"But you were only five," he says again and there's no pity this time. No anything but understanding.

He gets it.

"And you didn't know what to do."

She exhales shakily.

"Yes," she admits.

"So you became a doctor."

She nods slowly, once. Looks at him. "So I became a doctor."

He hums softly and turns her hand in his, tracing absent designs over her palm. She watches him bring it to his mouth, brush his lips over her fingers, and sigh wearily as he drops both their hands to his lap. She crawls to him again and he wraps his arms around her, just holding her.

She lets him.

She's exhausted but something inside her feels alive too, more alive than she ever has before. It's trust, she realizes almost giddily. She trusts him. She has told him everything she can and he is still there with her, still loves her.

He gets her. And she gets him. And she thinks that this is why they were meant to be together, maybe, why they had to put each other through hell for so long. Because of this moment right now. Because no one else knows them, no one else understands them like they understand each other.

And how could they? They are like, seriously fucked up.

It makes her laugh and he looks at her like she's crazy. She thinks maybe he wouldn't find it funny, so she just shrugs.

She's all talked out for the moment.

"Let's go upstairs," she suggests and smiles when he takes her hand and leads her to the stairs.

The talking thing? It's good. Hard and painful sometimes, most of the time, but they're getting better at it. This next part though? The part where he kisses the breath from her lungs and for long stretches of time she can't even remember her first name, much less her middle?

Makes all of the talking totally worth it.

[ ](http://community.livejournal.com/ga_ficawards/22703.html)


End file.
